Gobu Shinkan (Ink on Paper; opening of the scroll missing)

One Scroll, National Treasure since 1953

Gobu Shinkan (Ink on Paper; opening of the scroll missing) (紙本墨画五部心観, Shihon Bokuga Gobu Shinkan) is a set of iconographic drawings owned by Onjoji in Shiga Prefecture, designated a National Treasure on 31 March 1953. The quantity is one scroll, the category painting, the country Japan. Nothing is designated as an appendage.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs leaves the field for designation as an Important Cultural Property blank, so the work went to National Treasure without that earlier step, the fourteenth such case among the properties covered here.

The commentary reads: a work of the Heian period. This is the ninth one-sentence commentary among the properties covered here.

Loss Written into the Title

The title repays attention: Gobu Shinkan, opening of the scroll missing.

The bracketed phrase states that the beginning of the scroll has been lost. Damage to the work is written into its name.

Other titles do the same. Designation number 00072, a painting of an outing beneath blossoms, is recorded with the note that two panels of the right screen are missing. Loss again sits inside the name.

With the screens of pines and flowering plants, an empty slot before a slash showed that no artist was recorded. What a title conveys is not only what is present. It also conveys what is gone.

For the Choju Jinbutsu Giga, the omissions and disturbed order appeared nowhere in the record for the work itself, only in the record for a detached fragment. Where loss is written into the title, the state of the thing can be read without chasing other records.

Complete and Incomplete under One Number

The designation number shows the structure.

This scroll is number 00073, sub-number 02. Under the same 00073, sub-number 01 is Gobu Shinkan, the complete scroll, also one scroll and also owned by Onjoji.

One designation number, two scrolls divided by sub-number: 01 the complete one, 02 the one lacking its opening.

The complete scroll takes the earlier number. Two scrolls carrying the same text are recorded apart because their states differ, yet gathered under a single listing.

The summer landscape and the autumn and winter landscapes were recorded as having formed one set, yet listed as separate properties. Here the reverse holds: two scrolls share one number.

How Sub-Numbers Work

Among the properties covered here, sub-numbers have almost always been 00.

The screens of pines and flowering plants are 00042 sub-number 00; the Saigyo scrolls are 01218 sub-number 00. A sub-number of 01 or 02 marks a listing that covers more than one object.

This is a different device from a quantity greater than one. The sixteen arhat scrolls count sixteen hanging scrolls within a single property and use no sub-number. These two scrolls each have their own record, of one scroll apiece, and share only the number.

Whether things are gathered or kept apart is expressed through two mechanisms: quantity and sub-number.

The Agency does not record why these two scrolls were divided by sub-number. The difference in their condition is the likely reason, but the record does not say.

Seeing It

Onjoji, in Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture, owns the scroll. It is a temple holding, not an object kept on permanent display.

Work on paper is vulnerable to light and is usually shown only for short periods. Being a long scroll, it can hardly be opened out in full for display.

The complete scroll and this one hold separate records, so the two will not necessarily be shown together.

Conditions of access can change, so check with Onjoji before travelling.